King James Bible Dictionary

Acts 16:35
Acts 16:38

SERGEANT, noun s'arjent. [Latin serviens, serving, for so was this word written in Latin.]

1. Formerly, an officer in England, nearly answering to to the more modern bailif of the hundred; also, an officer whose duty was to attend on the king, and on the lord high steward in court, to arrest traitors and other effenders. This officer is now called serjeant at arms, or mace. There are at present other officers of an inferior kind, to attend mayors and magistrates to execute their orders.

2. In military affairs, a non-commissioned officer in a company of infantry or troop of dragoons, armed with halbert, whose duty is to see discipline is observed, to order and form the ranks, etc.

3. In England, a lawyer of the highest rank, answering to the doctor of the civil law.

4. A title sometimes given to the king's servants; as sergeant surgeon, servant surgeon.

SERGEANTRY, noun s'arjentry. In england, sergeantry is of two kinds; grand sergeantry and petit sergeantry. Grand sergeantry, is a particular kind of knight service, a tenure by which the tenant was bound to do some special honorary service to the king in person, as to carry his banner, his sword or the like, or to be his butler, his champion or other officer at his coronation, to lead his host, to be his marshal, to blow a horn when an enemy approaches, etc.

Petit sergeantry, was a tenure by which the tenant was bound to render to the king annually some small implement of war, as a bow, a pair of spurs, a sword, a lance, or the like.

Acts 16:35, 38 (R.V., "lictors"), officers who attended the magistrates and assisted them in the execution of justice.

SERGEANTSHIP, noun s'argentship. The office of a sergeant.